The Authors of Pain Nearly Quit WWE In 2018 Due To Ridiculous Decision From Creative

You know those moments when corporate suits make decisions that are so mind-numbingly stupid, you wonder if they’ve ever actually watched their own product? Here’s a perfect example from the Vince McMahon era that nearly cost WWE one of its most promising tag teams before they even got started on the main roster. That team is the Authors of Pain.

The Day Everything Almost Fell Apart For Authors Of Pain

The Authors of Pain were dominant tag team champions during there NXT days. It helped that they had Paul Ellering as their grizzled veteran manager (you know, the guy who managed the legendary Road Warriors), and were basically unstoppable forces of nature. Everything was clicking. Then WWE brass decided to “fix” what wasn’t broken, as Paul Ellering wasn’t coming with them.

Rezar recently spilled the beans in an interview with Metro.co.uk, and let me tell you, the behind-the-scenes drama was more intense than their matches. “To be honest, when we had to leave Paul Ellering, that was the day that we were deciding to stop with WWE,” Rezar revealed. “The first day at the main roster, they were telling us, ‘You have to leave Paul Ellering.’ And me and my tag team partner Akam… he said, ‘Yo, let’s just give our resignation letter and just leave.'”

Can you blame them? Here they were, riding high on success in NXT with a manager who gave them instant credibility and connected them to wrestling history, only to have some executive decide that what they really needed was to start over from scratch on the main roster. If it wasn’t for Paul Ellering, the Authors of Pain would have left the company in 2018.

The Real Reason Behind the Split

Now here’s where Rezar drops the real bombshell about why Ellering got the boot, and it’s peak Vince McMahon logic. According to Rezar, it wasn’t about creative direction or character development – it was about ego.

“It was the Vince McMahon thing. He didn’t like older people than him or people his age on the show. He wanted to be the only elderly person who would be in the spotlight at the time.”

Let that sink in. One of the most successful wrestling promoters in history allegedly made creative decisions based on not wanting to share screen time with other people his age. It’s the kind of petty power play that would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging to the talent involved. They were never the same when they spilt from Ellering.

The Bigger Picture – What Could Have Been For Authors of Pain

This whole saga perfectly encapsulates everything that was wrong with WWE’s talent management during the later years of Vince McMahon’s reign. Here you had a team that was working perfectly, with all the pieces in place for main roster success, and the company’s response was to break up what was working for seemingly arbitrary reasons. They tried it again when pairing them back up again in 2023-2025, but it was too little too late.

The Authors of Pain’s near-walkout serves as a perfect reminder that sometimes the best creative decision is no decision at all. When something’s working, maybe – just maybe – you should let it keep working instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.